All I do is Dream of You
by bigedwards
Summary: He supposed it was the worst kind of narcissism, falling in love with your own character.   Arthur/Eames-Implied character death.


_**Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever own Inception or any of the characters in Inception, however bad (badly?) I may want to.**_

_**Okay! My first Inception fanfic and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. **_

_**Rating: T (just in case)**_

_**Pairing: Eames/Arthur**_

_**Warning: Implied character death, uhhh crazyness?**_

_**At any rate, Enjoy!**_

.

In his defense, he hadn't _meant_ to. He had _meant_ to scribble out a mediocre novel like he had four times before, cash the check, and spend a blissful few weeks not worrying about his rent. He had the outline all planned out too; he was utterly ready to plod out another slice-of-life-house-wife-in-crisis paperback in three mindless weeks.

_Except, he'd had this…dream, this damnable dream, full of men in smart suits and slicked back hair and elegant hands that shaped wicked, twisted mazes like it was easy, like they'd been doing it forever._

Then he'd woken up, heart racing and fingers twitching to caress computer keys, and he was full of this _itch_. This itch to write like he'd never had before, so he sat down at his purple laptop, wrote all night, and by the time the sun bled rose colored clouds into the sky, two things had happened. One, he'd created a man named Arthur (the exquisitely beautiful man from his dream), given him a lovely descriptive paragraph, and two, he'd fallen in love with Arthur and was completely fucked.

.

Still, he was a man with his head screwed on straight, and he'd read once that only insane people didn't question their sanity, so he knew he wasn't mad. That, at least, was a relief.

He supposed, though, it was the worst kind of narcissism, falling in love with his own character. Every one of his writer friends insisted that all their creations were merely warped projections of themselves, and he had always believed them (of course, occasionally he wondered if that meant on the inside he was really a middle-aged married woman who craved an affair with the gardener, but he normally chose to ignore thoughts of that nature).

.

He got the name of a good therapist from the secretary at his publicists' office. She was a sweet girl, very clever too, and when he went in to inform his agent that, well, his book was going to take a bit longer than expected, sorry about that mate, she only took a quick glance at him before scribbling a number on the back of a business card. He took the card hesitantly, and she flashed him a smile.

"He's very good", she assured him. "I'm really referring to the sex, of course, but his psychology isn't half-bad either". Then she laughed quite loudly and he smelled peppermint on her breath.

"Thank you Ariadne" he mumbled on the way out.

.

He felt her effort, coupled with his Arthur obsession, warranted at least a visit.

The office was warm and inviting, paneled in wood, and lit by a flickering lamp. The therapist was a man's man, blonde, muscled, with piercing green eyes. He found immediately upon introduction that under no circumstances could he admit why he was really in Dr Cobb's office. His problem was really too crazy to risk confiding in a therapist, anyway. He told Dr Cobb he was depressed, and watched the clock until their hour was up. As he was leaving, the doctor placed his hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

"Listen, I feel like maybe you were holding something back from me. I can help you, but only if you let me."

He blinked at Cobb dumbly. What could he say?

Dr Cobb took a steadying breath, and he gazed down the hallway to the side of him. Cobb's eyes unfocused for a moment then passed searchingly across his face.

"Listen, I know this sounds a little…odd, but you don't, by any chance, know a man named Arthur, do you?"

He fled.

.

His computer screen cast a sick glow across his living room. Arthur lounged in a chair to the right of the laptop, expensive shoes on the desk, skinny ankles crossed. He clutched a wine glass his hand and swirled champagne deftly.

He sat a few paces behind Arthur, head in massive hands, and kneaded his forehead. He'd begun seeing Arthur three days after meeting with Cobb, and hadn't left his flat since then.

He was afraid someone with see him chatting with nothing and call the police. Truthfully, he shouldn't have worried. Arthur didn't talk much, and when he did, it sounded horridly like his own voice, British accent and all.

.

The wineglass shattered when Arthur stood, slipping carelessly from his fingers. He looked up from his lap and watched the jagged edges of glass bounce across the hard wood floor and the champagne soak into a shag rug.

"Eames", Arthur said.

Eames tore his eyes away from the mess and brought them, almost reverently, to Arthur's face. Arthur's expression was cold, distant. He tipped his head at Eames, inquiringly.

"Why don't you leave?"

Eames blinked at him uncomprehendingly. A far off portion of his brain remarked that something small and significant had changed, but he wasn't sure what.

"Leave, darling?"

Arthur's shoes snapped loud, too loud, as he strode across the floor and stopped in front of Eames.

"Yes, leave. You've outstayed your welcome, and honestly? You're boring me. I don't want you anymore."

Eames rose from the sofa and moved until the two men stood inches away from each other. Arthur tilted his head up minutely to maintain eye contact.

"_I've_ outstayed _my_ welcome?" Eames kept his voice deceptively calm. "Dear, I think it's you who's been infringing on my hospitality."

A strange expression flitted across Arthur's face, something of a cross between bitter humor and disappointment. He took two steps back and brought a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

"No," he mumbled. "That's not right. _He_ wouldn't say that."

Arthur raked his hands through his hair, mussing it. Eames noticed faint purple shadows beneath his eyes for the first time. Arthur's face suddenly crumpled, palms rubbing almost panic stricken at his temples, breath coming in short pained gasps.

"Oh no," he moaned, throat catching. "I've ruined it. I tried so hard this time… Oh Eames, not again..."

Eames finally realized what had changed. Arthur's voice was right. His American accent was there, his tone, the rich cadence of his words.

"Arthur…?" Eames started out. He felt something tighten in his chest, like the world was shrinking around him.

Arthur looked up at him, dark pupils swimming in a flood of moisture.

"Oh Eames", Arthur's (_Arthur's!_) voice broke. "I wanted-I tried-I thought maybe if we fought, I could do it right. I could get you right…" He laughed, a terrible choke that shook the tears down his cheeks, and wrapped his arms around himself protectively. "You always said I never had much of an imagination."

Eames steadied himself on the couch arm. He desperately wanted to look away from Arthur, but the world on the edges of his vision was melting away, dissolving like sugar in water.

"I-I don't…" he stuttered, and was vaguely aware that he didn't have a British accent any longer, and that he was shrinking until he was perfectly level with Arthur's head. "You be-belong to me. I wrote you," Eames gasped out. "I created you!"

The mirror mounted in front of him catches his eye for the first time (had it always been there?). Eames is gone. In his place stands an utterly bewildered Arthur, terror in his eyes.

He looks at the other-Arthur, whose tears are now plopping mutedly onto his stark white collar.

"No, baby," the other-Arthur manages out. "I created _you._" He stretches his arm out, and it passes through Eames-Arthur's chest, straight through his heart and out the other side. The last thing Eames-Arthur thinks is "I'm just like a ghost", and then he is gone.

.

Arthur sat up in the middle of the empty warehouse. Tears wet his face and he scrubbed them away with his sleeve, his cuff links catching painfully on the skin of his cheekbones in the process. He swiveled his legs off the lawn chair and onto the floor and then braced his elbows on his knees, head in hands.

His chest ached. Eames had been so perfect - perfect like he hadn't been in _so_ long. Like he hadn't been since he was still alive.

Arthur grit his teeth against the word.

_Alive._

As if he had ever ceased inside Arthur's head. As if he hadn't haunted Arthur every damn moment since he bled out on the freezing pavement in the January twilight.

Eames followed Arthur everywhere. He served Arthur his morning coffee in the café, held the elevator door open for him in an office building, jostled him on the subway, smiled up at him from the face of the evening weather forecaster.

And, because Arthur had always been a glutton for punishment, there was no reprieve even in his dreams.

The Eames in his dreams was flat and robotic, an Eames that went through the motions all while his eyes—his bright, vivid, dancing, _alive_ eyes—were dead.

It left Arthur screaming.

So he tried so damn hard to be imaginative. He rarely did anything but sleep.

Cobb paced around his apartment when he visited and threw his hands up helplessly and pleaded with Arthur silently, eyes so full of pity and _understanding_ that it made Arthur sick, but Cobb did not stop him.

(For this Arthur remained grateful, because sometimes he wondered if he would kill just to keep dreaming of Eames' face.)

Finally, he'd come up with a plan that was elegant and faultless in its simplicity. All he had to do was create a projection of Eames that thought _he_ was the real one, and everything (and everyone) else was fake.

Arthur tossed and turned through this dream—this nightmare—so many days and nights he lost counts, and each time he managed to screw it up. In every single dream his plan went along swimmingly, until they spoke.

He could never, not when Eames was alive and certainly not now, predict what Eames would say, and it ruined him.

(Arthur's logical thought process concluded that Eames was slightly more predictable in his phrasing during arguments, but inevitably, Arthur's own superior vocabulary would spew from Eames' mouth and then Arthur could not pretend anymore. The dream would collapse around Arthur and the last thing he always saw was his own anguished face. )

Arthur sat up, brushed off his shirt front and, shaky fingered, tugged a syringe from its black velvet case. He flicked the glass with his index finger, dissipating bubbles in the clear liquid, and injected it into the IV tube attached to his arm. He lay back on the multicolored lawn chair and fixed his eyes on the ceiling.

_(The last time Arthur had seen Ariadne, she'd wept bitterly and screamed at him to snap out of it. He'd visited her at the university, and she'd hurled a vase at his head. "You've gone crazy" she screamed at him, cheeks as red as tear filled eyes). _

Arthur could feel the drug in his veins, slithering down his arm and through his body like a train in a subway.

Brilliant brain foggy from sudden exhaustion, Arthur slowly recalled something he'd thought was interesting from an article in a magazine once, _long ago…_

_(…he'd read once that only insane people didn't question their sanity…)_

Arthur wasn't crazy; there was no question in his mind.

_But_, he reflected, before sleep once again overtook him, _it certainly was enough to drive a man mad, wasn't it?_

.

_**Please review! **_


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